The evening before last was another meeting of the Curry Club and I arrived at the large car park in plenty of time before our meal was scheduled to start at 6.00pm. I had a pretty good evening’s chat with the people around me and one of my fellow diners reminded me of the next meeting of our Classical Musical Appreciation group where we needed to do some preparation before the event. This involved listening on BBC Sounds to the First Night of the Proms which we are going to discuss and then we will follow that with a discussion of the life of Bach. The lady informed me that she was shortly to go with a friend across the three Andaluz cities of Granada, Cordoba and Sevilla and I expressed my envy at her trip which I have myself made a couple of times before. I am pretty sure that I have some travel books in my ‘travel’ bookcase so I said that I would try and hunt these out and lend them to her when I see her next Wednesday. She is going with ‘Riviera Travel’ which is a well known travel company for this type of tour so I am sure she will have a great time. At the end of the meal, I got into conversation with a couple who had just recently joined U3A and this was their first Curry Club outing. They hailed from mid-Wales so I informed them about the Dylan Thomas I had heard at the weekend and I could inform them about Meg’s Welsh relatives from both the North and the South. The man in the couple explained he used to run the Bromsgrove Rambling group so evidently he knew the Lake District quite well. After a few minutes conversation, he said that he recognised me from the ‘Chatty Table’ discussions we typically have each Wednesday when the Methodist centre is not closed for a summer refurbishment and so we had probably met before without realising it – wheels within wheels! I think I will try and sit next to them at our next Curry Club do because I am sure we can explore some fascinating items of mutual interest. I got home just after 8.00pm and followed the European Athletics competition being run in Birmingham but with sparse crowds in the evening. This is not surprising because it involves a journey from a Birmingham suburb after 10.00pm at night and I imagine this is enough to deter many from attending. However, I was rewarded by witnessing GB take first and second place in the last event of the evening which was the Men’s 100 metres. These two black sprinters were predicted to run well, and securing gold and silver helped to pin the GB team to the top of the leader board. Upon consulting my phone when I got home, I received some more good news. I had sent out text messages to some of my nephews/nieces telling them about my stay in Yorkshire in just over two weeks time. One of them had responded very quickly and my American friend and I are going to dine with him and his family in a restaurant booking he had made for the six of us the day after we arrive. I think this restaurant is only recently opened and specialises in authentic Andaluz (Spanish) cuisine, and I think that eating there will make us imagine that we are actually eating a meal in Spain. As a bonus, the restaurant is only 2-3 minutes from our hotel as well so this is a real treat to which we can look forward, as well as the pleasure in connecting again with my Yorkshire family. In the evening, we have the eclipse to which to look forward so my American friend is to come round shortly before six and we can experience the eclipse together probably on the TV as we do not have the special glasses to view it directly.
Immediately after I had breakfasted, I hunted through my travel bookcase and was pleased to discover some guides that I could loan to my fellow U3A member who I shall see next week at our Classical Music Group. I find I had a guide to both Granada and also to Cordoba but not to Sevilla which has perhaps gone missing. But I did have a very comprehensive and copiously illustrated guide to Spain, one being a Baedeker and the other being published as part of the DK ‘EyeWitness’ travel guide series. These last two guides have many pages devoted to Seville and to the pile I have added a Spanish-English dictionary and a guide to Lille which my friend may be visiting in the not too distant future. This will certainly be sufficient if she can find space in her luggage for them but better the books be used than mouldering in my bookcase. After the morning had progressed, I ventured forth and picked up the last copy of ‘The Times‘ from the petrol station before doing my weekly shopping. This weekend, we are going to have some fillets of fish so I purchased both some salmon and also some trout so that we try a bit of each. I read that teriyaki sauce is fantastic on salmon as the sweet, salty, and savoury glaze cuts through the rich, buttery fat of the fish. When cooked, the sugars in the sauce caramelise into a sticky coating that seals in moisture. On the trout we can try some simple seafood sauce, or even some 1000 Island sauce or some horseradish sauce. I read that horseradish is a fantastic pairing for trout. The sharp, pungent heat of horseradish cuts right through the rich, oily texture of the fish. It works especially well with smoked or cured trout, typically softened into a creamy sauce using yogurt, crème fraîche, or sour cream. So after I cooked the two lots of fish next Sunday, I will have the various top dressings available in little finger bowls so that we can experiment and try out what works best for us. After I returned from shopping, it was so very hot that I merely helped myself to some scoops of recently purchased chocolate ice cream. As I had eaten so well yesterday, I am giving myself a lighter day in terms of meals and will cook a cheese omelette for myself accompanied by some salad which will be more than enough. Thinking ahead to my our Yorkshire trip my family is quite large but how many of them we will eventually meet is uncertain. But, in theory there are my sister’s four children, their collective total of twelve grandchildren and two great grandchildren. So in discussion with my American friend, we are going to fill the pages of a little hardback book so that she can work out who is who when we meet.